


Knowing That in My Arrival

by susiecarter



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Exorcisms, Extra Treat, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Rescue, Self-Flagellation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24956422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: He didn't know, in the instant he paused before exiting the lot, which way he meant to turn. He couldn't have said, if asked.But his hands, the moment they needed to know it, knew it. His heart knew it. He turned. The instant he'd heard what he'd heard, a line had been cast and had caught his soul upon its hook, and he gave himself over and followed the tug of it, unquestioning,feeling.He drove.(Or: post-canon, Marcus goes to rescue Tomas, not knowing what he'll find—nor what's going to be asked of him. Not that it matters, because there's nothing he wouldn't do for Tomas.)
Relationships: Marcus Keane/Tomas Ortega
Comments: 25
Kudos: 78
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	Knowing That in My Arrival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skitz_phenom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skitz_phenom/gifts).



> I loved your "exorcism forcing Marcus to confront past issues" and "Marcus on a desperate hunt to save Tomas post-S2" prompts so much that I couldn't pick between them, so. I hope you enjoy the combination, and that you've had a great F5K!
> 
> All exorcism litanies/verses are either from the show or from the Bible.

_How would I know my own destination?_  
_It is enough for me to set out_  
_to get there_  
_somehow,_  
_knowing that in my arrival is my end._  
_My names are_  
_This Way._  
_Follow Me._  


—"Path", by Daniel G. Hoffman

Tomas needed him.

 _Tomas needed him_.

He went.

He dropped everything. He didn't hesitate a moment. Just turned round and walked off the dock. He had a truck, left safely ashore while he'd been out on the water; a few days, that was all. It was fine. He got in, and turned the key, and it coughed itself to life.

He didn't know, in the instant he paused before exiting the lot, which way he meant to turn. He couldn't have said, if asked.

But his hands, the moment they needed to know it, knew it. His heart knew it. He turned. The instant he'd heard what he'd heard, a line had been cast and had caught his soul upon its hook, and he gave himself over and followed the tug of it, unquestioning, _feeling_.

He drove.

It took the rest of the day, half of the next. He didn't stop, didn't sleep. He crossed state lines, once, again, again. He kept going.

And then, between one moment and the next, his foot moved, and he discovered he'd begun to brake. He was—he was taking the next exit, he discerned, and the moment he thought it, nothing had ever felt so right. He didn't look at the sign, didn't register the number or the name of the nearest town.

It didn't matter. He didn't have to know where he was, what it was called.

This was the place. Tomas was here, and Tomas needed him.

It was only a little further along before he found himself turning again, pulling up in a parking lot. A motel, he saw when he got out of the truck, and for a moment it was so much like the good days, the days before it had all gone wrong, that he felt his eyes sting.

That was what it had been like, after the Rances: driving round the country with Tomas, in another truck entirely; stopping anywhere they could find, cheap little places, just so they could lie down flat for a while instead of falling asleep in the truck and waking up with cricked necks one more time. Together, together all the time. Looking after each other. Not alone.

And Tomas wasn't alone now, Marcus reminded himself sharply, because Marcus had come for him.

He tipped his hat a little lower, and drew a slow breath, and then he went inside.

Something drew him to a halt just inside the door, some indefinable tug. He obeyed it; and when it passed and he stepped forward, he saw that the receptionist had only just turned away, and was currently occupied frowning down at her phone. She didn't see him, didn't stop him.

He didn't look at the numbers on the doors. He just walked along the corridor, filled to the brim with the clear calm certainty that he would know where he needed to be when he got there.

He slowed. His hand settled upon a doorknob. He turned it, and the way was opened for him—there was no reason why the door should have been left unlocked, and yet it was.

Tomas was sitting on the edge of the bed, a newspaper spread out beside him. He looked up and saw Marcus, and the smile that crossed his face was glorious, breathtaking, beautiful. " _Marcus_ ," he said, and stood.

And it was then that Marcus understood what he was here to do.

He didn't flinch. He didn't falter.

The smile he gave Tomas in return was so wide his cheeks ached. It was easy: God, it was good to see him. Marcus drank him in greedily, head to foot, as he stepped nearer—his face, his eyes, the particular way his hair curled, the exact breadth of his shoulders. Marcus's throat tightened helplessly. And then Tomas was there, and reaching for him, and Marcus drew him without hesitation and hugged him.

Even now, even when he understood, he could not help but be grateful to hold Tomas in his arms again. He dropped his face into Tomas's shoulder and squeezed tight, and let his eyes fall shut.

"I've missed you," Tomas murmured in his ear, and Marcus bit down on the inside of his own cheek so he wouldn't say something unwise.

"And I you, believe me," he managed instead, and then drew away with one last clap to Tomas's shoulder blade.

"But whatever are you doing here?" Tomas said, clasping his arm before he could withdraw entirely. "How did you find me?"

"Oh, you know how it is," Marcus said readily. "Was passing through, heard a few things, asked round a bit."

Tomas beamed at him, bright and sweet, and then shook his head a little. "Marcus," he said again. "Marcus, after the way you left—" He stopped, and bit his lip; Marcus tried hard not to let his eyes be drawn to the movement, and didn't entirely succeed. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

Marcus swallowed, and looked away. "You shouldn't have," he let himself say. "I didn't intend that you ever would. But I—"

His throat closed. He shook his head.

"Marcus," Tomas repeated, soft, and stepped in close again.

It had to be done. It was the only way Marcus could think of that might work. He could never have allowed himself to speak the words for any lesser reason; and still, even though it was deliberate, even though he chose it knowingly, they gritted their way out between his teeth, scraping, raw, as if they had been dragged.

"I couldn't bear it."

Tomas touched his shoulder, clasped the back of his neck—leaned in, and pressed their foreheads together, and Marcus wanted to weep.

"It's all right," Tomas said. "Marcus, it's all right. I forgive you. You must know I forgive you. What you did—"

Marcus flinched. Tomas didn't let go.

"I know it troubles you. I know. You killed a man because the other option was to risk me. You think it means nothing to me, that you place me above your own immortal soul?"

"I think you don't understand," Marcus murmured, and gave in: touched him back, let his hands close upon Tomas's warm steady shoulders, let himself soak in the heady awareness of Tomas's nearness. "I cannot be forgiven for it."

"Marcus—"

"I cannot be forgiven for it," Marcus repeated, "because I cannot repent of it."

Tomas fell silent.

"I've tried. God knows I've tried," and it wasn't just a phrase, not when he said it. God must be well aware, by now; Marcus had been beating upon His door for months with anguished pleas, with endless wretched self-castigation.

That, Marcus thought with grim amusement, was probably exactly why this had happened. God knew. God knew Marcus would do anything, _anything_ , for Tomas—had already committed one of the worst sins imaginable, murdering an innocent man, and found himself able to regret the necessity but not the action, no matter how desperately he scoured himself for some shred of true contrition. And now Tomas needed him; and God knew very well indeed that Marcus would tear himself apart before he would fail Tomas.

"Marcus," Tomas said, hushed, and touched his jaw, thumbed his chin—tilted his face, just a little, and kissed him.

Marcus recoiled. He couldn't stop it, and didn't try. It was honest: his own helpless rebellion in the face of being given what he knew he should not want, of having made manifest what he had sworn he would keep still, and silent, and shut away where Tomas would never find it.

Tomas held on, and soothed him, gentled him. Kissed him again, and Marcus shook beneath it, strung tight and trembling as wire, breathing in hitching gasps against Tomas's mouth.

He didn't kiss back. How could he make himself kiss back? He could taste bile, high in his throat; and yet at the same time, it was still Tomas's hands upon him, Tomas's shoulders beneath his palms, Tomas's lips against his skin. His eyes fell shut and he let them, and he told himself it was a kindness—to turn this, for a moment, into an earnest gesture of love, to permit himself to hope Tomas could perceive it.

He took Tomas's face in his hands, and moved into his touch, and told himself it was not too high a price to pay, because nothing could be. Not for Tomas.

The bed was not far. Tomas drew Marcus toward it one slow stumbling step at a time, and Marcus shuddered and trembled and didn't stop him.

"I've been thinking about this," Tomas said into his ear, soft, breathless. "I've been thinking about what you did for me; I couldn't stop. I couldn't understand why you would. And then—and then I started to, but you were gone. I wanted to tell you that it was all right, that I understood, but you were gone. I'm so glad you found me. Please, please, don't leave me again, Marcus—"

God. God, it was everything he had been so guiltily desperate to hear, spoken by that voice, in that sweetly awed tone. It was excruciating.

The bed, Marcus reminded himself. Only until they reached the bed. He could survive it for that long. He could; he must.

He did. They reached the edge, bumping the backs of Tomas's knees, and tipped themselves over onto it. Tomas smiled up at Marcus, heartbreakingly warm and pleased, mouth stunningly red.

Marcus touched Tomas's face, smoothed his palm along the hint of stubble at Tomas's jaw, thumbed the unfairly generous curve of Tomas's lower lip. He looked at Tomas gravely, tenderly. And this once—this once, perhaps it wouldn't be selfish to say it. This once, it might be some sort of comfort to Tomas to hear it.

"I love you," he said, very low.

He kept handcuffs in his coat pocket; he always had. The habit had come in useful more often than he'd have liked, but it was best to have something of the sort, some quick and dirty restraint you could apply to buy yourself a little breathing room, especially when you were working alone. Tomas didn't resist Marcus's free hand clasping his, drawing it up toward the corner of the bed—and then Marcus let go of his face, reached and dug a finger in and hooked one cold hard circle with it. He closed one end round Tomas's wrist and clicked the other shut on one of the struts just below the headboard, and he was quick enough that Tomas was only just tensing underneath him, frowning, by the time he was done.

"Marcus, what on earth—" Tomas jerked his arm. The handcuff rattled. He blinked at it, and aimed a bewildered look at Marcus. "Not that I'm necessarily opposed, but that's moving a bit fast, don't you think?"

Marcus bit down on a bitter laugh. So that was how it was going to be, was it?

"I love you," he said again, more steadily. "All right? I love you, and I'm not going to just let it have you. Understand, Tomas?"

Because it was Tomas's brow that drew down, then, furrowing, the picture of innocent confusion. It was Tomas's wrist round which Marcus had closed the handcuff, and it was Tomas's hips bracketed by Marcus's knees where he was still perched on the bed over the body that was Tomas's.

But it wasn't Tomas who looked up at him out of those lovely dark eyes, and said, "Marcus, come on. Are you serious?" The demon laughed a little, a huff of breath, and shook Tomas's head, and caught at Marcus's shirt, the lapel of his coat, with Tomas's free hand. "You know, I think I ought to be insulted. After all that wasted time, after leaving me oblivious for years—I finally figure it out, and do what you wouldn't, and you think I'm _possessed_?"

Tomas's voice had grown sharper as it spoke; it sounded frustrated now, a little urgent.

"I don't think it," Marcus said. "I know it."

"Marcus—Marcus, please—"

Marcus bit down on a sigh, and pushed himself back, to the edge of the bed and then onto his feet. There were things he needed in the truck, things he needed to get; he needed to call Mouse and figure out what the hell had happened, where she was and how the thing in Tomas had managed to make her leave.

But he paused anyway, and crouched down to look it in the eye. "The thing is," he said to it, "unfortunately for you, if you're right and I'm wrong—well, that's very embarrassing for me, of course, but where's the harm? I say a lot of Latin and do my best to exorcise a man without a demon in him, throw some holy water on him, tell him God loves him—" He shrugged, illustrative. "You've a bored, wet man who's been tied to a bed for a while. But if I'm right and you're lying, and I let you have him?" God. The thought alone was unbearable. Marcus swallowed hard. "I lose everything. _Everything_." He cleared his throat. "So I imagine you can see why I won't be risking it."

"Marcus," it said, warily, pleadingly. "Marcus, don't do this."

"But," Marcus added, "I don't think I am wrong. And I promise you right now that he'll never be yours, no matter what I have to do to be sure of it."

For a moment, it stayed just as it was. Pushed up on one elbow, staring at him, looking tense and furious, stricken—it had done quite well, Marcus thought. It was almost convincing.

And then it narrowed Tomas's eyes, and tipped his head back, and began to laugh.

"That's just what I thought you might say," Marcus murmured, and shucked his coat, and began to roll up his sleeves, already looking round for the room key so he could lock the door.

* * *

It wasn't easy.

Not that Marcus had thought it would be, of course. He was a bit out of practice these days, admittedly. But he remembered this; he remembered what it was like.

It could have been worse. The demon had a good solid grip on Tomas, but it hadn't dug itself in as deep as all that. Its capabilities were limited—it couldn't exert all its strength, couldn't work all it willed. Marcus had been half-afraid it would break Tomas's wrist with the handcuff, before he had the chance to replace the cuffs with rope, but it didn't. Sometimes he thought it seemed almost tentative, compared to many of the ones he'd dealt with before. As if it meant to be careful with Tomas. As if it wanted him whole.

It did all the usual things, of course. Screamed, thrashed. Snarled and bared Tomas's teeth at him, and told him in loving, visceral detail how it would use them to tear out his throat. Explained to him that it wasn't going to kill Tomas, because it wouldn't have to: he would break, and give himself over to the demon, and be lost. Laughed at him, eyes black and gleaming—laughed, and laughed, and laughed. They all loved to do that.

Marcus bore it, and didn't falter. He worked his way steadily through every litany he knew, every trick up his sleeve. He fought. Ground was gained, and lost, and gained again. _The nearer you go to God, the nearer He will come to you._

Sometimes the demon grew tired. Sometimes it drew away, to regroup, and left Tomas there. In those lulls of quiet, Marcus rested. He bathed Tomas's hands and feet and face, and gave him water, and made sure the ropes were cushioned well, weren't wearing weals into his wrists and ankles. Spoke to him, softly, hoping perhaps he could hear; hoping it might be some sort of comfort to him.

But the demon was never far, not really, and Tomas's eyes never opened except to show Marcus the demon, still there behind them, looking out.

Marcus pressed on, dogged. He drank a tremendous amount of coffee. His own handwriting, the notes he'd scribbled in his Bible, blurred and swam before his eyes. Sometimes he caught himself simply pleading with Tomas, hoarse and wretched, none of the words he was supposed to be reciting at all. Sometimes he knelt in silence by the bed while Tomas writhed, while the demon gouged Tomas's palms with Tomas's fingernails and shrieked, and he closed his eyes and he prayed.

Mouse didn't call. Marcus tried every number he had ever had for her, and the new ones that were stored in Tomas's phone, left messages with everyone he could think of. He began to suspect, gut knotted up with cold dread, that she'd been separated from Tomas for a reason—that the thing in Tomas now had somehow known to come for him without Mouse there to stop it. Marcus had been called here because Tomas needed him; and Tomas wouldn't have needed him if Mouse had been around. Whatever it was, whatever trap she had been caught in, Marcus knew she would get out again. But perhaps not fast enough that she'd have been able to save Tomas.

He worked. He tended to Tomas. He fought for Tomas's soul.

And then, on the third day, the battlefield changed.

It was one of the quiet times, the times Marcus both loved and hated. The demon wasn't gone, only gathering its strength, deciding on its tactics; but it left Tomas looking no more than simply asleep.

It worried Marcus more than a little, how quiet Tomas had been. Usually the possessed were still in control of themselves to some degree, intermittent but undeniably present. Before, when the demon had withdrawn, Marcus had tried to waken Tomas once or twice, and had gotten nothing but vague murmurs, a blink or two of heavy unfocused eyes.

Tomas had gone away, that was all he could think. Tomas had gone away somewhere within himself, trying to hide from the demon, and couldn't—didn't want to—find his way back.

Marcus didn't try to wake him anymore. He settled for cleaning Tomas's hands, his face, tending to whatever new wounds the demon had managed to carve into his palms, his wrists. He lifted Tomas's head at a careful angle, and gave him a little water, and some of it trickled down across Tomas's jaw, lost, but his throat moved; his body swallowed, reflexive.

At least, Marcus thought, it was better than the times the demon made Tomas scream his throat raw. At least it was better than the times it made him laugh.

He bathed Tomas's face, tender, gentle with the washcloth across the catching, scraping stubble. He might have been tempted to shave Tomas, except bringing even a safety razor within arm's reach of the demon was a mistake Marcus knew better than to make. Tomas—

Tomas would just have to do it himself, once the demon was gone. Marcus let his eyes fall shut, and swallowed.

His thumb was touching Tomas's chin. He let himself lean in and rest their temples together. He would not falter. He would not fail. He would do anything, anything, to save Tomas.

"Fear not," he murmured into Tomas's ear, "for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor hidden that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in darkness shall be heard in the light—"

He had an instant's warning in the sudden tension of Tomas's body against him, in the abruptly powerful grip with which Tomas's bound hands were only just able to close upon his forearms, straining the ropes to their limits. He jerked back, reflexive, and Tomas's eyes snapped open, and they were dark and endless, staring—double-pupiled, Marcus saw, with a horrible lurch.

"Would you like that?" the demon whispered, goading. "Would you like for him to hear all the ways you've gasped his name in the dark?"

"You are a child of God," Marcus told it steadily, because he knew better than to let it make him ashamed. He felt a grim smile pulling at the corners of his mouth—as if he hadn't committed far more terrible sins in Tomas's name than the sin of longing? Honestly.

The demon grinned at him, and the grin was full of shadows.

And then, in the space of a blink, something changed. Tomas's eyes, they were—they looked fine again, ordinary. His hands grasped Marcus just as tightly, but the tips of his fingers weren't digging in half so punishingly. He looked dazed, uncertain. Desperate.

"Marcus?" he said faintly. " _Marcus_ —"

"Tomas," Marcus said, but he could get no further before Tomas lunged up and pressed his mouth to Marcus's.

An instant's helpless surprise; and then Marcus understood.

The kiss wasn't the point. It was his _head_ , it was—Tomas, his mind, the way he could open it up; it didn't go only one way. Tomas had never used it like this before, not that Marcus knew, but now—

Tomas reached out for Marcus, and Marcus was borne away.

He was a boy, and he was waiting in the dark. Closed in, surrounded, stone and old metal lit only by flickering, halfhearted flames. Cries echoed in the distance, far away but not far enough.

There were other boys sitting beside him. Silent, still. Flinching, now and then, when those far-off cries went sharp, and then tensing up, glancing round furtively to see whether anybody'd noticed, whether that weakness would have them judged and found wanting.

They were afraid, Marcus knew.

Marcus hadn't been. Or—or perhaps that was only how he'd remembered it, later, as a man. For years and years, strong in his faith, secure in his skill, thinking of this and of what would come next had brought comfort, gladness: he had discovered his path. He had found his calling. He had become what he was meant to be. But now—

Now he knew where that path would take him, and he shook.

"You don't have to do this," Father Sean said.

Marcus looked up.

Father Sean, he thought distantly, had probably never said those words in that order to anyone in all his life.

He was gazing down at Marcus now with something that was almost pity, and that, too, Marcus could not have imagined on his own.

"You don't have to do this," he said again. "Stay here. One of the others can go. It doesn't have to be you. It never had to be you, Marcus. You can be free."

Marcus closed his eyes, shuddering, and covered his mouth with his hand. How many times had he longed to be told that, since Mexico City? How many times had he wept, desperate to hand off the burden God had deemed him unfit to carry? Desperate, and yet unable, because he knew what others didn't, because he saw the signs when no one else did, because who would he be if he turned away—

Or was it because he had been stung, repudiated, lost? Had he clung to that burden because he wanted it, because he wanted to be special? Because he wanted to be chosen. Powerful. Beloved. Because surely if he only proved himself, demonstrated his devotion, God would relent and raise him up again.

He was twelve years old, and he sat in the dark, and he wept.

Father Sean touched his shoulder. "Stay here," he said, and in his rough uncompromising voice it was an order, and one to which Marcus longed with sudden intensity to yield.

Who might he have been? The boys who'd failed—Marcus had never seen them again. But he had never believed they had been killed, nor even turned out onto the street. They could still be useful to the Church, after all, if not in the role for which they'd been intended. What labor would Marcus have been assigned? Chores, odd jobs, errands for which no particular talent was required and yet which still must be accomplished, for the greater glory of God.

A quiet life. A simple life. A life, surely, without quite so much _pain_ —

But that pain existed for a reason, Marcus thought dimly. Because—because he cared. He couldn't quite remember; he was both himself and not himself, both twelve and not twelve at all, neither version of him entirely in focus.

But the pain was for a reason. He was _here_ for a reason.

He was here for Tomas.

His aching head dug up the name and he clung to it fiercely, squinting, thumbs pressed to the bridge of his nose, hanging on tight. He was here for Tomas. And if he stayed—he wanted to, he did, but he knew instantly that that path wouldn't take him to Tomas.

He had to find Tomas.

"No," he said, and his voice was young and soft. He stood.

They'd already brought in the other boy; he was vomiting into a bucket, sobbing for breath. Father Sean's brows drew together, a deep and thunderous scowl forming, and he struck Marcus across the face sharply. "Listen, boy—"

Marcus dodged round him, and went for the tray. He knew the right book the moment he laid eyes on it, and snatched it up: it, and the lantern, the two lights he could carry with him into that darkness, and he went.

"I'm coming, Tomas," he said into the shadows of the tunnel stretching out before him.

A scream, an ugly ringing laugh, answered him.

But he couldn't falter. He closed his hand tighter around the book, lifted the lantern higher, and walked into the dark.

He was somewhere else.

He was—twenty, now, he knew. Twenty, kneeling and shirtless, face wet, clutching a discipline so tightly his knuckles were white and aching.

Oh, God. Not this. He didn't want to live through this again.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

He'd done penance before. Of course he had. But not like this. This had been the first time he had tried to purge not guilt, not an act he regretted, but a part of himself; the first time he had believed, down to his bones, that his own nature was sin.

At twenty, he had already performed more exorcisms than most priests did in a lifetime. He had already been a soldier of God. That had only made it worse: God loved him, God stood with him, and he repaid God's touch with _this_? This sickness, this revolting affliction, this profound depravity. _I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway_ —

He'd refused to acknowledge it for years already. He'd ignored it, pretended not to feel it. He'd called it anything but what it was.

And then, at twenty—oh, it had been such a small thing. He'd seen two men, that was all. In an alley; not even clearly, only their silhouettes, their hands on each other, the way they moved against each other. Their mouths, coming together, parting, coming together again.

He'd looked too long. He'd been jolted with heat, all up and down his spine, shivering along every nerve. And for a moment, mindless, without thought of sin or consequence, he'd _wanted_. He'd wanted that. He'd wanted to be one of them.

He'd hurried away after, throat tight, breath short. His heart had pounded. He had to repent of it, he knew. That he hadn't moved, hadn't touched himself, meant nothing. _But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and defile the man._ Thought was sin, as well as action. And he hadn't been able to pretend he didn't know his own thoughts any longer.

And then—

Well. Then he had ended up kneeling on the floor, weeping, beating himself bloody.

Christ, he thought helplessly, and wiped his wet face with his free hand, the knotted cords of the discipline making a soft sound against the floor as he trembled.

"You don't have to do this," Father Sean said.

Marcus flinched. Father Sean hadn't been here, not for real. Not the first time.

And yet Marcus made himself look, and Father Sean was there. Standing before him, that same heavy brow, those sharp eyes, as if Marcus were twelve a third time.

"No one asks it of you. No one knows. No one has to know. Get up and walk away; no one will stop you."

It sounded truer said in Father Sean's voice, Marcus thought, than it would have if said softly, kindly, coaxingly. In that blunt accent, words ground out low and grudging, it sounded harsh. Frank. Assertion, not excuse.

He wanted to do it. He wanted to get up and walk away. He wanted—

He wanted to find Tomas, he reminded himself. That was why he was here.

And—and surely the best way to do that was to listen to Father Sean. Wasn't it? He couldn't find Tomas if he was kneeling here, flaying the skin from his back one swing at a time. Wasn't that so?

And yet he hesitated. He felt confused; his head ached. But he had a dim sense, deep in his gut, that things were not as they seemed.

Because he knew Tomas. Didn't he? Tomas—Tomas was ahead of him, not behind him. He'd found Tomas once, and he could do it again.

It was simple, he thought suddenly. It was simple. He needed to go the same way he had before, and he would end up in the same place.

And before, he hadn't gotten up. He hadn't gotten up, and he hadn't walked away.

He closed his eyes, and turned his face away from Father Sean. He tightened his grasp upon the discipline, and swung hard, and the stinging lines that burned their way across his back felt nothing like the forgiveness he'd been desperate for at twenty.

"I'm coming, Tomas," he whispered, and swung again.

He was in Mexico City.

No. God, no, not this—not _this_. He clenched his fists, and swallowed bile.

His head was clearer now; he wasn't twelve, and he wasn't twenty. He was here for Tomas, all right, and he remembered what that meant, he could picture Tomas's face. This—this was the demon. Tomas was hidden away somewhere inside himself, and had brought Marcus inside him, too; but the demon was trying to keep Marcus from finding him. And he was starting to understand the trick of it after all. He'd been right, last time: he must stay on the path, literal and metaphorical, that had taken him to Tomas before, and it would again.

But, oh, it was going to be hard. He remembered, too, the determination he'd felt here. He'd been concerned for Gabriel. Of course he had. But there had been no room in his heart for the possibility that he might fail. That _he_ might fail—as if ability or inability had lain with him, and not with God. What a fool he'd been. A damned fool. And now, sick with the knowledge of how it would end, the last thing he wanted was to step back into that room.

He stood on the balcony, looking at the curtains hung across the door. The sun was hot on his neck. He could feel the sweat at his temples, taste the shreds of the flesh of an orange trapped here and there between his teeth. His collar was stiff round his throat. He stood there, and he trembled.

He had to go back in. That was how it had happened before, and that was how it must happen again.

And, as if it had heard him thinking—perhaps in here, it had—the demon appeared.

"You don't have to do this," Father Sean said, stern and level.

Marcus laughed, a short bitter huff of it through his nose. "Third time's the charm, eh?" he murmured. "Is that what you're hoping?"

"Hoping you'll see sense," Father Sean bit out. "Told you a hundred times, boy, the world don't know who you are, and it don't care. No one asks this of you. No one's looking. No one will remember what you do, or what you don't—"

Marcus set his jaw. "I will," he said.

Father Sean took his arm: a hard grip, bruising, punishing. "You'll fail again," he said. "You know you will. Walk in there, and you'll fail again. You won't save the boy, and you won't save him. You know that."

Marcus twisted his face away, and bit down on the inside of his cheek.

He was getting closer. He had to be. Each of these memories brought him nearer to the present—nearer to Tomas. It wouldn't be long now.

He didn't want to watch Gabriel die again. Knowing what was waiting for him, his breath came short; his eyes stung hot. But it had already happened. It had already happened, and he couldn't change that.

Walking away now would spare him nothing. The pain of this memory had already belonged to him, had already left its mark. To run from it would not erase that mark, that pain. And to accept it—to accept it would take him closer to Tomas, who wasn't lost yet. Who wouldn't be, not while Marcus lived to seek him.

"For this my son was dead, and is alive again," Marcus recited softly; "he was lost, and is found."

And he wrenched himself from Father Sean's grasp, and went in.

The light changed. It had been daylight on the balcony, inescapable beating sun; and yet as he stepped within that room, everything went dark. Everything except the lone swinging bulb that had kept him company through that long wretched night.

It didn't happen the way it was supposed to. He stood there, and the book was in his hands, holy water in a jar—but Gabriel was already dead, bound tight to the bed, head twisted round sickeningly on his neck. Marcus took a shuddering step forward, and fell upon his knees, and pressed his forehead to the back of one of Gabriel's small slack hands. "O, my God," he whispered, ragged, "I am so heartily sorry," and then he sobbed, raw and uncontrolled, and could not say the rest.

The weight of the hand didn't change. He couldn't perceive a difference. And yet when he looked up again, eyes wet, teeth dug deep into his lip, it was not Gabriel but Tomas who lay bound to the bed before him.

He was frozen, helpless. No— _no_ —

And then he saw that Tomas was breathing. Tomas blinked, as if awakening, and met his eyes, and said, raw and hushed, "Marcus?"

Marcus became aware, dimly, that the bulb was flickering, blazing too bright by half, swinging wildly. He lunged up, and took both Tomas's hands in his, and held on tight. When it had been Gabriel, Marcus remembered, the night had been still, still and hot, any sense of struggle or tumult confined within the bounds of the room; but this time he could hear the wind picking up, howling round just beyond the walls, and a sudden sharp clatter as if of rain.

"Every unclean spirit, every Satanic power," he heard himself say—too quickly, stumbling, fumbling, but he _meant_ the words, with every inch of his tarnished soul. "Every onslaught of the infernal adversary, we command you, begone, and fly far from the church of God. I command you, unclean spirit, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God—"

The room shook. The wind was louder now, deafening; if Marcus had been told it rained not water but iron nails, he would have believed it. Tomas clutched at him weakly, shivering, and Marcus drew one hand free, touched his face—curled in over him, reflexive, protective, and pressed his mouth to Tomas's brow.

And suddenly, he found a new set of words upon his tongue.

"Though I speak in the tongues of men," he said unsteadily, "and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a clashing cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." He swallowed, and jumped again, blind, following wild impulse. Following the path that called to him. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

He closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead to Tomas's.

"Tomas," he said, as if the storm that surrounded them were not screaming fit to tear all the world apart. "Tomas, please. Come back to me."

Tomas's hand, weak and shaking, straining to the limit of the rope that bound it, came and clasped the nape of Marcus's neck; and all was silence.

* * *

Marcus landed hard, and for a moment couldn't breathe. He blinked, and coughed, and pushed himself up on one elbow.

He'd—he'd fallen from the bed, that was what had happened. He scrambled up, and Tomas was there: there, and bound just as he had been, and he turned his head weakly toward Marcus and said unevenly, "Oh, God, are you all right?"

" _Tomas_ ," Marcus said, hardly more than a whisper, and then remembered himself and went for the ropes. The wrists first, closer, and then he rushed to the foot of the bed and freed Tomas's ankles. Water, he thought. Tomas would want water—there was a bowl by the bed, but with a cloth still dunked in it where Marcus had been washing Tomas clean, a shadowed swirl of blood from the wounds Tomas's own fingernails had dug.

Marcus hurried to the bathroom. His hands shook; he spilled the glass on the way back out, once, twice, and didn't even slow.

God. Tomas.

He held Tomas's head up, cradled carefully, while Tomas drank and drank, eyes sweeping closed. He felt helplessly aware of every detail, the way Tomas's hair curled against the sides of his knuckles, the ink-dark smudge of Tomas's eyelashes against his cheeks, the precise distance—not much at all—between where his knee had come down upon the bedspread and Tomas's hip.

Tomas stopped when the glass was half empty. "Thank you," he said, and Marcus bit down on a wild laugh.

As if Tomas had anything at all to thank him for.

"You need food," Marcus said. "You need clean clothes—"

"I do," Tomas allowed, but his eyes were already closing again. "It can wait. I can't—I can't stay awake, Marcus, I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Marcus murmured, and gave in: leaned close, and kissed his brow again, here in the real world. "Don't be sorry, Tomas."

"Don't leave," Tomas mumbled. "Please don't leave."

His hand had closed, tight and trembling, on Marcus's sleeve.

"I won't," Marcus said, and stayed.

He had meant to let Tomas rest. To watch over him; to be ready, when he woke again, to tend to him properly, clean him up, feed him something. Somehow, in comparison to Tomas, alive and whole and looking at Marcus with only one pair of eyes, it had stopped meaning anything to Marcus that he himself had been awake for almost a day and a half, and engaged in grueling work besides.

The first he knew of it was that everything felt very still, and warm, and quiet. He shifted a little, and the bulk of the warmth against him shifted back. And then he swam up out of the dimness and blinked his eyes open, and only then understood that he'd fallen asleep.

He'd fallen asleep, stretched out on the bed beside Tomas—who'd woken also, and perhaps had already been awake for Marcus knew not how long, and was watching him with steady soft eyes.

"Tomas," Marcus said, hushed.

The corner of Tomas's mouth drew up, a tiny slanting smile. "A motel," Tomas said. "Really."

"You chose well," Marcus managed. "Garbage side of town. All your carrying on, and I only got the cops called on me once."

Tomas's eyes crinkled, and his mouth moved more; he laughed, one quick quiet breath through his nose. "Lucky," he said.

And that—that, for some reason, was what made it abruptly too much to carry. That was when it got away from Marcus.

His eyes filled, hot and relentless. His throat closed. He couldn't breathe.

"Marcus," Tomas said, and inched closer to him, though there had been barely any room between them already; reached out, and spread a broad warm hand over his shoulder. "Marcus—"

Marcus shook his head, choked, wordless. God, he should—he should get up. He was the one who needed to be tending to Tomas, not the other way around. The last thing Tomas needed to worry about right now was _comforting_ him.

But his limbs would not obey him. He bit the inside of his cheek, and squeezed his eyes shut, and curled in on himself, and his forehead came to rest against Tomas's chest.

"Marcus," Tomas said again, more quietly, and slid his hand to the nape of Marcus's neck.

"I am lucky," Marcus bit out, hoarse, into Tomas's stained shirt. He needed to get up and get Tomas another, something clean and soft. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, and didn't move. Like this, he could feel Tomas breathing. He thought he could even hear Tomas's heart—or maybe it was only his own, pounding low in his ears. "My God, I am lucky."

Tomas was still against him for a moment. And then he swallowed; Marcus could hear his throat click. He swallowed, and held Marcus's head where it was, and pressed his mouth to the crown of it.

Marcus tensed all through himself. He could not help it.

He had—he had almost forgotten how all this had begun. He had almost forgotten what the demon had done, how it had tried to distract him when he'd first arrived. That he had let it; had let it, and pushed further still, toppled them both to this very bed.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, quietly, before Tomas could do some foolish thing like say it first, though he had not half so much reason to as Marcus. "I'm sorry, Tomas, I didn't—I was only trying to—"

"I know," Tomas said. "I know, it's all right."

He stopped, but he was—he hadn't moved, hadn't withdrawn. His hand still cupped the curve of Marcus's skull, fingers curling through Marcus's hair, deliberate and—and even protective, though Marcus couldn't think why that should be.

"It wasn't only you."

Marcus's breath caught in his throat.

"That the demon was trying to tempt, I mean," Tomas added. "It was—it wasn't lying, Marcus. I wouldn't have burst out with it in the first two minutes after you came through the door, if it had been me. But the words were true. I did think about it. I couldn't understand, at first. And then I could. Then I understood too well, but you were gone." He stopped again, and touched his mouth to Marcus's forehead; barely a kiss, only absent, resting it there, thinking through what he wanted to say. Marcus shivered beneath it anyway. "That was how it got in. I was—I felt ashamed."

Marcus bit his lip. That was the last thing he'd ever have wanted. He'd rather the idea had never occurred to Tomas at all than that Tomas should feel shamed by Marcus's—by Marcus.

"God, I'm sorry—"

"What?" Tomas said, and before Marcus could stop him or twist away, he had moved his hand, caught Marcus's face in it and tilted it up, and was meeting Marcus's eyes with a searching look, brow furrowed in dismay. "No, Marcus. No, not—I was ashamed of myself, not you. You were—it was all that was most beautiful in the idea of love, to me, that you would sacrifice so much for my safety. Principle, and conscience, and your own understanding of yourself, and even, perhaps, the love of God." He paused, and bit his lip. "Though I don't think He is ever as harsh with you, Marcus," he added softly, "as you are with yourself."

Marcus bit down on a laugh. "So I," he said, bitterly amused, "am all that is most beautiful in love. And you?"

"And I—" Tomas flushed a little. "You know I have always been inclined to some sins more than others. Here you had done this thing for me, this terrible, beautiful thing, and I—all I could think about was—" He bit his lip again. "And as you so rightly said, I cannot be forgiven that for which I do not repent. The demon wasn't only tempting you, Marcus. It was taunting me. It was taunting me with all the things I hadn't known to want to say or do before you left, with all the things I _wouldn't_ say or do if I ever saw you again, because I could never have repaid your love in such a way." He swallowed again, throat working. "It was telling me how it would kiss you with my mouth, how it would fuck you with my body, that you would never know; that you'd be too grateful for it to realize it wasn't me. That you would give yourself to it and then it would kill you with my hands, and there would be nothing I could do to stop it. That it knew how much I wanted you, that it was doing me a favor—"

God. "Tomas," Marcus said, and reached up, and covered Tomas's mouth with his hand. "Tomas, don't. It's over. I knew. All right? I knew it wasn't you."

Tomas's eyes were wet. He closed them; a tear spilled free, and Marcus released his mouth to brush it away.

"Shh. Hush. I knew it wasn't you. It's all right. Everything's all right, now."

"Marcus," Tomas whispered.

His hand was still on Marcus's face, his jaw, tilting it up. He opened his eyes, and curled in across the pillow, and kissed Marcus.

It was a bright and sudden shock. Of course Tomas had just said that he was—that he _wanted_ , that the demon had been using it against him, but somehow Marcus hadn't thought he meant that he still—that he would—that he was going to—

Marcus held himself together by the skin of his teeth, and blindly, mindlessly, kissed back.

Tomas broke away, and drew a sharp shuddering breath. "Marcus," he said again, soft, awed.

Marcus jerked back, too late, and cleared his throat. "I—you should eat something," he said, quickly, too-loud. "Your clothes—"

"All right," Tomas said, and smiled at him; but there was something new in his face, his eyes, a sweet and speculative warmth against which Marcus knew already he could muster no defense.

He'd thought he would take care of Tomas until Tomas was healed again, and together they would find Mouse, and then he would go. Of course he would. And that would be an end to it, until Tomas needed him again—until God came to Marcus anew and said Tomas's name.

But the look in Tomas's eyes wasn't one that spoke of endings. And Marcus—

Marcus would, perhaps, always find himself choosing the path that led to Tomas, even when no one asked it of him; because, given that choice, he could not find it in himself to turn aside.


End file.
